Chapter 1: Death by Gourmet Taco Truck

Miles Mercer always knew his job would kill him, but he had expected the culprit to be stress, not a taco truck named Salsa Apocalypse.

The truck came screaming around the corner of West 43rd at 8:17 p.m., horn blaring a mariachi rendition of “Ride of the Valkyries,” its painted flames gleaming under the wet orange streetlights. A giant cartoon chili pepper wearing a skull mask grinned from the side panel. Beneath it, in aggressive red letters, the slogan read: Flavor So Good It Ends Worlds.

Miles had exactly enough time to notice three things.

First, the truck was hydroplaning.

Second, the driver was holding what looked like a burrito in both hands instead of the wheel.

Third, the quarterly expense reconciliation spreadsheet on his laptop—open in his satchel, because he had been answering emails while walking like a terminal-stage corporate goblin—had finally balanced.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Miles said.

The Salsa Apocalypse hit him with a smell of grilled onions, cilantro, diesel, and doom.

Then everything became a very bright, very crunchy blur.

For one impossible second, Miles felt weightless. Not peacefully weightless, like floating in a warm pool on vacation, because Miles had not taken a vacation since 2019 and his concept of relaxation was ignoring Slack notifications for forty-seven minutes. This was the kind of weightless where his body seemed to have been filed as a miscellaneous expense and removed from the ledger.

The city spun around him in glittering fragments. Rain. Headlights. Someone screaming. The taco truck’s bell jingling cheerfully as if it had just sold death with extra guacamole.

He thought, with the absurd clarity that only arrived during imminent catastrophe, I never submitted my dental reimbursement.

Then the world went black.

ERROR.

Heroic Fate Routing Interrupted.

Cause of Death: Vehicular Culinary Impact.

Reassigning soul…

Miles did not consider himself a particularly religious man. He filed his taxes on time, held doors open for strangers, and only fantasized about setting the office printer on fire once or twice a week. If there were gods, he hoped they appreciated punctuality and had a generous policy toward sarcasm.

Somewhere in the darkness, something vast and bureaucratic shuffled papers.

Candidate Profile: Miles Adrian Mercer.

Age: 30.

Primary Skills: Accounting, compliance analysis, process optimization, passive-aggressive email composition.

Heroic Compatibility: Low.

Administrative Compatibility: Catastrophically High.

Summoning Destination: Eldoria.

Assigned Role: Legendary Hero.

Correction Pending…

Correction Failed.

“Excuse me?” Miles tried to say, though he had no mouth, lungs, or union representative.

The darkness folded.

Light stabbed through him.

Miles landed face-first on stone.

Not metaphorically. Not spiritually. His nose cracked against something cold, gritty, and damp, and the rest of him followed with all the dignity of a dropped sack of copier paper. Pain bloomed across his face. His teeth clacked together. His satchel slapped down beside him with a sad leather flop.

For several seconds, he lay there, cheek pressed against carved rock, breathing in dust, candle smoke, and something unpleasantly goat-adjacent.

Someone screamed.

Someone else screamed in response.

A third person shouted, “Put it back!”

Miles opened one eye.

He was lying inside a circle of crimson light etched into a vast black floor. The lines crawled and pulsed like molten neon beneath a slick of old wax. Around the circle stood twelve hooded figures in mismatched black robes, though “stood” was generous. Several were stumbling backward. One had fallen into a brass brazier and was beating sparks off his sleeve. Another clutched a book the size of a microwave and stared at Miles as if Miles had climbed out of it covered in mayonnaise.

The room beyond them looked like a cathedral that had lost a lawsuit with a haunted mine. Pillars of black stone rose into shadows too high for the torchlight to reach. Chains hung from the ceiling. Iron gargoyles leered from archways. Tattered banners bearing a horned crown sagged on the walls. Wind moaned through unseen cracks with the melodramatic commitment of a community theater ghost.

Miles pushed himself up on his elbows.

His glasses were miraculously still on his face, though crooked. His tie had flipped over one shoulder. His white shirt was smeared with grime and taco grease. One shoe was missing.

“Ow,” he said.

The hooded figures shrieked again.

“It speaks!” cried a thin man with a voice like a kettle boiling.

“Of course it speaks, Gribble! The incantation specified sentient champion!” snapped a woman clutching the massive book. Her hood had fallen back, revealing wild gray curls, a sharp nose, and eyes magnified by cracked spectacles. “Though admittedly the champion is smaller than projected.”

“Smaller?” Miles sat up fully and pressed two fingers to his nose. No blood. That seemed unfairly lucky, considering he had recently been tenderized by Tex-Mex. “Where am I?”

The cultists stared.

“Did he ask where he is?” whispered one.

“Maybe heroes are stupid,” whispered another.

“Maybe this is a test.”

“Maybe we got the wrong soul.”

The woman with the book went very still.

Miles looked down at the glowing circle, then at the candles arranged around him in skull-shaped holders, then at the robed people, then at the ominous chanting notes scattered on parchment.

He had attended enough mandatory corporate team-building exercises to recognize when a group of adults had made poor decisions and were hoping no one would notice.

“I’m going to ask again,” he said carefully. “Where am I? Why am I inside a satanic conference room? And is anyone here certified in first aid?”

A soft, embarrassed cough came from behind him.

Miles turned.

A woman stood just outside the circle, half-hidden behind a pillar, wringing a spade-tipped tail between her hands.

She was very clearly not human.

Small black horns curved from waves of wine-red hair. Her skin held a warm violet tint, and her eyes shone gold in the candlelight. Black wings, sleek and batlike, were folded tight against her back. She wore a fitted black dress with silver embroidery that might have looked elegant if the hem had not been scorched and if she had not been staring at him with the exact expression of someone who had accidentally deleted an entire shared drive.

“Um,” she said. “Welcome?”

Miles blinked at her.

“No,” he said.

She winced. “That is a fair initial response.”

The gray-haired woman slammed her book shut with a thunderclap that made half the cultists jump.

“Silence!” she barked. “The Champion of Light has crossed the veil! We must proceed before the bindings destabilize.”

“Champion of what now?” Miles asked.

The cultists straightened, some with visible effort. One of them hastily resumed holding a ceremonial dagger point-up. Another adjusted a necklace made of tiny finger bones that Miles hoped were decorative. The gray-haired woman stepped to the edge of the circle and lifted both arms.

“Oh summoned hero from the world beyond worlds,” she intoned, “chosen by divine fate, wielder of sacred wrath, destined blade of mankind—”

“Sorry,” Miles interrupted, raising a hand. “Quick clarification. Did you say hero?”

The woman’s eye twitched. “Yes.”

“Hero as in sword? Dragon? Prophecy?”

“Yes.”

“And you summoned me?”

“Yes.”

Miles looked down at himself. His wrinkled office shirt. His loosened tie. His soft accountant hands, currently trembling with adrenaline and probably death residue.

He looked back up.

“I think there’s been a clerical error.”

A ripple passed through the cultists.

“Clerical?” whispered Gribble. “Like priest magic?”

“No,” Miles said. “Like paperwork. Worse.”

The succubus took one tiny step forward. “Madam Vexara, perhaps we should verify the sigils. The resonance did stutter during the final stanza, and there was that strange smell of… toasted corn?”

“Lyria,” Vexara hissed, “this is not the time for your anxious little observations.”

“I just feel,” Lyria said, voice shrinking, “that if we meant to summon the Radiant Sword of Heaven and instead received a man wearing… a noose made of office cloth, perhaps we should—”

“It’s a tie,” Miles said automatically.

“Oh.” Lyria’s gaze flicked to his neck with fascinated horror. “Is it punitive?”

“Sometimes.”

Vexara jabbed one bony finger toward Miles. “Enough! Hero, declare your sacred class.”

“My what?”

“Your class. Knight? Saint? Archmage? Godslayer?”

Miles rubbed his forehead. A headache had begun behind his eyes, thick and pulsing. “Senior associate accountant.”

The silence was immediate, total, and devastating.

Somewhere high above, water dripped.

Gribble lowered his dagger. “Is… is that a kind of assassin?”

“No.”

“Warlock?”

“No.”

“Tax collector?”

Miles hesitated.

Every cultist recoiled.

“In a broad sense,” he said, “adjacent.”

Panic detonated.

Robes flapped. Candles toppled. Someone wailed, “We summoned a tax demon!” Another shouted, “Hide the donation chest!” Gribble tried to flee, tripped over his own hem, and crawled behind a skull lectern. Two cultists began stuffing scrolls into their sleeves with the guilty speed of executives before an audit.

Vexara went pale enough to match the chalk sigils on the floor. “No. Impossible. The ritual was flawless. We stole three relics, bribed an oracle, sacrificed a black goat, and correctly pronounced at least most of the ancient vowels.”

“Most?” Lyria said faintly.

“The goat had an accent!”

Miles pinched the bridge of his nose. His mind, trained by ten years of quarterly closes and management reviews, latched onto the only familiar element in the nightmare: process failure.

“Let’s take this from the top,” he said. “You attempted to summon a legendary hero.”

Vexara’s chin lifted. “To bind and corrupt him, yes.”

“Great. Horrible, but great. Why?”

“To save the Demon Realm,” Lyria said before anyone could stop her.

Miles slowly turned toward her.

The succubus flushed violet. “I mean, technically to destroy the Holy Kingdoms and usher in an age of eternal night. That was the language on the proposal.”

“Proposal?” Miles echoed.

“But practically,” Lyria continued, tail knotting around itself, “yes. Save the Demon Realm.”

Vexara looked as though she wanted to throw the heavy book at her. “The hero’s power was to be inverted through the Obsidian Crown, reforging his divine blessing into a weapon for His Dread Majesty.”

“So you kidnapped a hero to fix your kingdom?”

“Empire,” Vexara corrected.

“Your empire.”

“Dread empire.”

“Your dread empire.”

“Bankrupt dread empire,” Lyria whispered.

Every cultist glared at her.

Miles’ headache sharpened. “Bankrupt?”

Vexara clutched the book to her chest. “The Demon Realm does not discuss internal fiscal matters with summoned assets.”

“Summoned assets?” Miles said.

“You are technically property of the ritual circle until the binding contract is executed.”

“I’m sorry, the what?”

Lyria raised one hand, looking pained. “We should not call people property. Princess Malrienne said it damages morale and increases rebellion probability by—”

“Princess Malrienne reads pamphlets,” Vexara snapped.

At the mention of contracts, something flickered at the edge of Miles’ vision.

At first he thought it was another post-death hallucination, which seemed reasonable given the circumstances. Lines of pale blue light crawled across the floor, tracing the summoning circle’s symbols. Tiny annotations appeared beside each rune in crisp, floating text. Columns unfolded in the air like translucent spreadsheet cells.

Miles froze.

ABSOLUTE AUDIT ACTIVATED.

Analyzing Local System…

Entity: Forbidden Hero Summoning and Binding Ritual

Status: Active / Unstable / Legally Invalid

Primary Deficiencies Detected: 47

Critical Deficiencies Detected: 9

Tax Exposure: Severe

He stared.

The floating words stared back, insofar as words could stare.

“Oh no,” Miles said softly.

Lyria leaned forward. “What is it?”

“I’m seeing… interface text.”

Gribble peeked over the lectern. “Interface is a hero word.”

“It says your ritual is legally invalid.”

Vexara’s expression curdled. “Nonsense.”

More text bloomed.

Binding Contract Review:

Clause 1: ‘Summoned Hero agrees to eternal servitude upon arrival.’ Invalid. Consent not obtained.

Clause 2: ‘Soul collateral shall be held in escrow by Lord Malphas.’ Invalid. Escrow entity deceased 213 years.

Clause 3: ‘Payment to participating cultists: exposure, glory, and one commemorative dagger.’ Labor violation.

Clause 4: ‘All disputes settled by trial of screaming.’ Noncompliant arbitration mechanism.

Recommendation: Terminate contract. Fine ritual organizer. Offer summoned party restitution.

Miles’ mouth fell open.

Then, despite being dead, kidnapped, possibly in hell, and missing one shoe, a laugh escaped him.